I only know my father's face from a picture

Luwi Velleman was born in 1949 and lives in Semarang, in the Jangli district. His father, Louis Velleman, had the small Luwi in his arms and cherished him. Then in 1949 all Dutch soldiers had to return to the Netherlands. Father Louis left his girlfriend and child in Indonesia with the intention to return as quickly as possible, with a job and a future. But it never came to be. Luwi has never seen his father. He lived in the assumption that his father had abandoned him deliberately. Until he received a letter from Australia in 1990...

"My mother was still in her teens when she met a Dutch soldier, Louis Velleman. My mother had not been to school, she could not read or write. She worked, like many other Indonesian girls, as a domestic help in the Dutch army barracks nearby. There she met my father. He was her first love. But in 1949 all Dutch soldiers left and also my father. I was born already. And so my mother was suddenly alone.

When I was three years old, my mother married my stepfather. My sisters and brothers were born from this marriage. It's no secret that I have a different father. Because after all everyone around me knew it: my grandmother, the neighbors, they had all known my father! He always used to visit my mom. And when I was about seven, I could see the difference myself between my sisters and me even though they were still babies.

My stepfather was a carpenter. It meant he had a job whenever there were building activities. But when the building stopped, he was unemployed and therefore had no money. My grandmother cooked rice and other things to sell and earned money for us. My grandmother was old and her work was becoming increasingly difficult. Even my mother worked as a maid. But life was hard, there were at least seven mouths to feed and my stepfather was often unemployed. At best, we ate corn that we grinded and we bought some rice that we dried in the sun, to cook with the corn.

Sometimes we had nothing to eat. Then we looked for cassaves that we grated to cook porridge. It was always very difficult to gather enough to eat. I was still in elementary school, fourth grade, when I already had to help my mother. Finding wood for cooking, for example. And if there was some wood left we sold it to buy food. One of my daily tasks was to fetch water, with two buckets. In Javanese we say 'dipikul ", "to carry", to fetch water for daily use. For bathing, for cooking. I started at 5 am and sometimes worked until 11 o’clock in the morning, and then we sold it.

I was also sent to the Puskesmas [clinic] in Jatingaleh to fetch bottled milk for my sisters and brother who were still babies. Other people in the street asked if I could help to fetch bottles of milk for them as well. I thought it was a bit scary to carry that many heavy bottles but I did it anyway. At half past four, five o’clock I had to get up for that milk. I used a large cloth for that which I had sewn for two bottles to fit in. And so as a little boy I wore two bottles on my back with a rope over my shoulder, and two bottles at the front. So, yes a few kilos and then walk. It was pretty tough, I've done this for about two years. I gave the bulk of the money I earned this way to my mother, the other part was tuition. When I had delivered the bottles, I went to school from 7 am until 12 o’clock. The Elementary School here in Jangli. So while other kids, my friends, did their homework in the afternoon, I went lugging around all kind of stuff.

My mother worked until four o'clock in the afternoon. Usually when I came home from school, mamah was not home yet. If I was lucky there was rice when I opened the little cabinet. If I was unlucky, well, then I opened the cabinet door and immediately cried. I was so hungry! It was so hard! It happened to me time after time! At noon, or 1 o’clock I had to go to the vegetable garden. Someone else’s! I took along an arit (sickle) to find something to eat. And that’s how I became a thief.

With my feet and my arit I took the cassava tubers from the ground, raw, and ate them. If I had had enough it was not so bad, my stomach did not ache so much. To drink, I looked for a banana tree and with a piece of wood I let the water run out to drink. And then I went back to the forest to collect wood. And the wood, we sold to survive. This went on for years.

When I was a bit stronger, my body bigger, I found it quite nice to be able to earn some money with gathering cassava tubers that remained after harvest. At 2 am already I’d hit the road, with my dunak, a woven basket of bamboo. One, two, three, four, yes ....those little cassava tubers. Back home we would partially peel the cassava and cook them. And then my mother Surip would make a variety of dishes. Sometimes we grated it, to cook porridge. Sometimes we flattened them, to make gethuk of it, a kind of sweet paste of boiled cassava, to eat for lunch. That was not too bad, I could then sleep at least. If we had not have these, we could not sleep of hunger.

At home we often argued. We often quarelled because there was no money. Well, then I would run away! I did not want to hear this, I would be gone. At 7 pm I would bring water home and at 9 pm I would get water to sell sometimes until midnight or 1 o’clock at night. Then I slept a little and in the morning I went to school. Until 1957 I had a very difficult life.

After primary school I went to high school but not for long, only for three months, at the Fathers of Franscisus. But that was not a state school, you had to pay for it. There was no money at home to pay for school so I left school and did nothing special except hustling to earn money for food. So in that time as everyone said, and I admit it, I was a rascal. Then luckily I got a job in the garden of the St. Elizabeth Hospital. I passed my wages to my mother to buy food for her as well as for my brother and sisters and stepfather. And in the evening I worked as a parking attendant, taking over the work of parking attendants who already went home. The money I earned this way I kept for myself, or for example, to renovate the house.

Whether my dad treated me differently from my brothers and sisters, because I had a Dutch father? I do not know really, because I never saw him. I was hardly at home. But if he had wanted to treat me differently, he probably had not dared. Because I earned much of the money, so he would think twice! In the village among my friends I never noticed that they treated me differently because I had a Dutch father. Maybe they also did not dare because I was strong and a rascal. I would deal with them. Because if someone was annoying me I would finish him. That is how I was, very hard. My difficult life made me so.

It sometimes happened that children from outside the district reviled me. Then they would make fun of me, calling me 'Londo’, Dutchman, or ‘child of the occupier’, that sort of thing. Once when I had looked for wood, I ran into someone from the Karang Panas neighborhood. ‘Hey, Dutch child, child of the occupier’, he called after me. His name was Kasno, he is still alive. I chased him immediately. Yes, I ran after him, I hit him. But Kasno would not reside. He ran back home to fetch his friends. And some time later, I was stopped and beaten up. I often came home full of bumps and bruises because I would never step aside. To this day, I'm already 60 years old, there are still people who call me ‘Crazy Dutchman’. And on August 17, Independence Day, I often hear jokingly: 'Look a child of the occupier...'. From friends and acquaintances of mine. Previously, if someone would say that to me, yeah well, I was angry! But nowadays, when someone calls me names, I let it go. Go ahead! I am not ashamed of myself. I am a child of a Dutch soldier. That's right. The Dutch also left many good things behind like buildings, stations, railway lines, motorways, waterworks, drinking water. I name these things in response to the bullies. If you want to call it an occupation, then call it an occupation. But Indonesia has had many benefits from it. The Dutch left a lot. I just say: also see it form the other side. Just in Semarang, 90% of all roads are constructed by the Dutch. Are they cruel, do they often murder someone, who says so? How many generations have passed by now? Come on, ask anyone older than us! Old people from the past, when they were telling about Indonesia, they always told that the Dutch period was 'normal'. I defend this.

An unexpected letter

One day, it has been twenty years ago, a letter was delivered. From my halfbrother from Australia! It turned out that for years my father, after he was sent back to the Netherlands, has been trying to return to Indonesia to take care of my mother and me. He applied for various jobs, but he was unable to come to Indonesia. He then decided to emigrate to Australia because it was a lot closer to Indonesia than the Netherlands. He hoped it would be easier to come here from Australia.

From the Netherlands to Australia, wanting to come here form so far to meet his wife and son! But it never happened. Because when he wrote my mother in those years that he was trying to come to Indonesia, she wrote him back that she had married my stepfather. Then my father broke off the contact.

The first contact between my dad and me came about because his son who was still young, found a picture of me and my mother Surip in a box as well as letters from my mother. He asked his father about us and then my father told him: 'This is a photo of your older brother, Luwi in Indonesia...’. He then wrote me a letter again, we were still living at the same address. And so we got in contact. Now we send letters and photographs back and forth, and gifts, and sometimes money. My father in Australia never became a rich man, he also had to maintain a family. We both never had the money to visit each other.

So I've never met my father and I only know his face from a photograph from 1987. He sent it to me when we got back in touch. On that picture he is as old as I am now and he is father of a new family. He must have loved my mother a lot because he only remarried in 1980. When he was 53! He has sacrificed a lot to get re-united with my mother. He has always sent money and gifts and clothes for me. But my mother never told me. I sometimes had to collect money bills, but she never told me they came from my father. I always thought he had abandoned me! Later I became very angry with my mother. That she had not waited for my father. But when I threw it at her feet, she would only cry, cry, cry.

I don’t blame my father. But I miss him terribly, I really have been missing him all my life. Thankfully my name is the same as my father's. My father's name is Louis, and my name is Luwi. And my grandson is called Luwis. So even though we have never met, our name continues to connect us.

Do you recognize yourself in this story, did you yourself had to leave a child in Indonesia? Or do you know someone who is looking for his child, his or her father, half brother or half sister? Or have found him or her?Please let us know!

It was Love with a big LGo there and meet him, is what I would recommend. He is your son and you are his father. He has a right to know his father, not just from letters and photographs, but in reality. Tickets from Australia are not too expensive nowadays so I hope you can make...Meer...29-06-16 10:14